Best possible antidote to radicalization: Education

Best possible antidote to radicalization: Education

Published 8 June 2015

 

Education is the best possible antidote to radicalization, Professor Louise Richardson told the British Council’s Going Global conference in London last week. Richardson, who was recently nominated as the next vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford, said: “Any terrorist I have ever met through my academic work had a highly over simplified view of the world, which they saw in black and white terms. Education robs you of that simplification and certitude. Education is the best possible to antidote to radicalization.”

Education is the best possible antidote to radicalization, Professor Louise Richardson told the British Council’s Going Global conference in London last week.
Richardson, who was recently nominated as the next vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford, said: “Any terrorist I have ever met through my academic work had a highly over simplified view of the world, which they saw in black and white terms. Education robs you of that simplification and certitude. Education is the best possible to antidote to radicalization.”
A British Council release reports that Richardson, currently principal and vice-chancellor at the University of St. Andrews, was speaking on a panel discussing radicalization and extremism in universities in the United Kingdom and beyond. She told the audience of international higher education leaders that alienation is an unsatisfying explanation as to why young people join terrorist groups.
“The most combustible situation is lack of economic opportunities for an educated workforce. The great value of universities is that we have people with the time and expertise to explore these issues,” she added.
In a wide-ranging discussion on radicalization in universities and counter-terrorism measures, the audience was also told that threat levels are being exaggerated.
Professor Marie Breen-Smyth, chair in International Politics, University of Surrey, said, “There is an exaggeration of threat. Road accidents are much more of a threat to society than terrorism will ever be, even in Northern Ireland. Threat exaggeration serves a particular interest in society to make money out of counter- terrorism and security. That’s not to say there isn’t a threat, there is, and we need to be concerned about it, but let’s get it into perspective.”
Breen-Smyth told the audience that the key problem lies with violence, and not radical ideas. “I would put education in schools and universities about violence and alternatives to violence. We need to equip young people with an understanding of how to organize campaigns and impact on their worlds in a non-violent and democratic way.”
It was vital, the panel agreed, that radical thought was allowed and fostered in universities. Richardson pointed out that “The idea that the world was round was once a radical idea. It’s imperative we have a place that ideas can be challenged, and universities are the perfect place for that.”
Professor Mohammed Farouk, vice-chancellor, Federal University, Kashere, Nigeria, said “In my experience in Nigeria in the 1970s it was almost a rite of passage for students to become radicalized, to take on issues of social justice. Today, ‘radicalization’ now becomes equated with terrorism, violence. I see radicalisation as more of a process that challenges the status quo, rejects the status quo and takes on existing ideas in society. Radicalization needs to be taken away from terrorism.”
The panel agreed that not enough is known about what causes an individual to become radicalized and turn to violence. Bill Rammell, vice-chancellor at Bedford University and former U.K. Minister of State for Higher Education (2005-8) said: “Education is most effective counter force to extremism, but it’s not the case that if you educate somebody you are in the clear and they don’t go down the path of violence.”

Mapping organized crime, terrorism hotspots in Eurasia

Mapping organized crime, terrorism hotspots in Eurasia

Published 8 June 2015

 

More than a quarter of all the drugs produced in opium-rich Afghanistan pass through Eurasia. Drug trafficking in the region has been linked to the strength of such terrorists groups as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Islamic Jihad Union, and al-Qaeda. The illicit sale of weapons is common in the area, and locals are drawn into human trafficking rings either for forced labor or sexual exploitation. As organized crime plays an increasing role in funding terrorism, researchers aim to pinpoint hotspots in Eurasia where drug trafficking, human trafficking, and terrorism coincide. The research team, selected to receive a $953,500 Minerva grant from the U.S. Department of Defense’s Minerva Research Initiative, will examine the connections between terrorism and organized crime in Central Asia, South Caucasus, and Russia.

As organized crime plays an increasing role in funding terrorism, research at the University of Kansas aims to pinpoint hotspots in Eurasia where drug trafficking, human trafficking, and terrorism coincide.
Selected to receive a $953,500 Minerva grant from the U.S. Department of Defense’s Minerva Research Initiative, Mariya Omelicheva, the study’s principal investigator, along with KU geography professor Stephen Egbert and Rowan University political science associate professor Lawrence Markowitz, will examine the connections between terrorism and organized crime in Central Asia, South Caucasus, and Russia. The three-year project also will look at the conditions under which terrorist-trafficking alliances are forged and changed and the ability for governments and international organizations to monitor, prevent and dismantle the terrorist and criminal activity.
“Distinguishing this study is its systematic approach, which does not rely on anecdotal or piecemeal evidence,” said Omelicheva, who is director of the KU Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies and associate professor of political science.
A KU release reports that the project, using GIS tools, will map and model the nexus between trafficking and terrorism in nine Eurasian countries. Researchers will pull the geographical coordinates of major terrorist incidents from the Global Terrorism Database, geo-reference drug seizures reported by the United Nations’ Office on Drugs and Crime, and human trafficking data assembled from the International Organization for Migration survey. KU students will help with the mapping and analyzing of data.
A better understanding of the connection between trafficking and terrorism in Eurasia improves U.S. national security, Omelicheva said. Ultimately, the project hopes to identify trafficking and terrorism hotspots where the U.S. military can direct assets to disrupt the activity.
“Trafficking and terrorism adversely impact governance, security, stability and development in this region and beyond,” Omelicheva said. “They create conditions precipitous for the rise of crime, violence and extremism in states that are U.S. partners and allies.”
More than a quarter of all the drugs produced in opium-rich Afghanistan pass through Eurasia. Drug trafficking in the region has been linked to the strength of such terrorists groups as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Islamic Jihad Union, and al-Qaeda. The illicit sale of weapons is common in the area, and locals are drawn into human trafficking rings either for forced labor or sexual exploitation.
“Central Asia is a hotspot for human trafficking and drug trafficking. A lot of the trafficking that is happening is for Russian and European consumption, while the Central Asian states are where most of the traffickers and trafficking victims originate,” Omelicheva said.
Over the past few decades, the means by which terrorist organizations are funded has dramatically changed. The breakup of the Soviet Union eliminated the major state funders. After 9/11, the U.S. led efforts to clamp down on money laundering and other financial operations that supported terrorism. Those changes have left terrorist groups more dependent on organized crime.
“They have been either engaged in criminal activities themselves or form alliances and partnerships with criminal organizations,” Omelicheva said.
The connection between terrorism and organized crime can be a complex one, Omelicheva said. For example, drug dealers and traffickers can be recruited while in prison to be terrorists, creating a hybrid identity.
Deciphering if acts of violence are terrorism or organized crime can be difficult. In some tumultuous areas of Central Asia, bombings or assassinations have been attributed to terrorism when they were actually part of a drug turf war.
“If we misrepresent those type of violent activities as terrorism, we are giving the wrong idea of what is going on,” Omelicheva said. “The policy implication is that funds get misplaced and we are coming up with solutions that don’t match the nature of the problem.”
The release notes that the KU Institute for Policy & Social Research (IPSR) assisted with the development of the grant proposal and will manage the DOD award. IPSR is the KU’s designated social science research center and has ongoing research focused on human trafficking.

Major defeat for Erdogan as Islamist ruling party loses majority

Major defeat for Erdogan as Islamist ruling party loses majority

Published 8 June 2015

 

Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was not on the ballot in Sunday’s parliamentary elections, but his ambitious agenda for Turkey was – and he lost big. The losses of his Islamist Justice and Development party, or AKP, were the most significant and painful losses in the party’s 20-year history – and the first losses for Erdogan since he emerged in 2002 to dominate the Turkish political scene. Erdogan openly proclaimed that the goal of AKP in Sunday’s election was to win at least 66 percent of the seats in parliament — the number required to make changes to the Turkish constitution. The AKP now has nearly 50 percent of the seats in parliament, short of the constitution-changing threshold. The Turkish voters, however, soundly rejected Erdogan’s ambitious agenda: Not only did the AKP not win the required majority – the party actually lost power. With 99 percent of the votes counted, the AKP had won 41 percent of the vote, down from the 49 percent it won in the last national election in 2011. It will now have only 258 seats in Turkey’s Parliament, compared with the 327 seats it has in the outgoing parliament. There are regional implications for the Erdogan and AKP loses: On Syria, Libya, and other regional issues, a subdued Erdogan and a tamer AKP may be less of an obstacle to more harmony and greater coordination among the key Sunni states in the Middle East, which is good news for the twin efforts to contain Iran’s regional hegemonic ambitions and weaken Iran’s allies, on the one hand, and defeat the nihilistic forces of jihadist Islamist extremism, on the other hand.

Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was not on the ballot in Sunday’s parliamentary elections, but his ambitious agenda for Turkey was – and he lost big.
The losses of his Islamist Justice and Development party, or AKP, were the most significant and painful losses in the party’s 20-year history – and the first losses for Erdogan since he emerged in 2002 to dominate the Turkish political scene.
Erdogan openly proclaimed that the goal of AKP in Sunday’s election was to win at least 66 percent of the seats in parliament — the number required to make changes to the Turkish constitution. The AKP now has nearly 50 percent of the seats in parliament, short of the constitution-changing threshold. The AKP thus cannot change the constitution on its own, and it has failed to persuade smaller parties to joint it in this effort.
Hence Erdogan’s call to the Turkish people to give his AKP the 66 percent needed for a unilateral change of the constitution – changes, he said, which would allow him to dismantle the framework of the republic which Kemal Ataturk created nearly 100 years ago.
The Turkish voters, however, soundly rejected Erdogan’s ambitious agenda: Not only did the AKP not win the required majority – the party actually lost power.
With 99 percent of the votes counted, the AKP had won 41 percent of the vote, down from the 49 percent it won in the last national election in 2011. It will now have only 258 seats in Turkey’s Parliament, compared with the 327 seats it has in the outgoing parliament (these numbers may change slightly when all votes are counted). For the ruling AKP to remake the constitution, it would have had to increase the number of its seats in parliament from the current 327 seats to 367 seats. Instead, it will have 258 seats.
The result, with 99 percent of the votes in:

• The AKP, with its 41 percent of the vote
• The traditional opposition, the secular, free-market-oriented Republican People’s party (CHP) with 25 percent
• The right-wing, populist Nationalist Movement party (MHP) with 16.5 percent
• The pro-Kurdish leftist Peoples’ Democratic party (HDP) with a surprising 12.5 percent The disappointing results handed another serious defeat to Erdogan. The AKP not only failed to get the 367 needed to make constitutional changes – the AKP now has only 258 seats, which is short of the 276 seats required to form a majority government. With the 327 seats the AKP won in 2011, it could rule without coalition partners – even though it was not enough for constitutional changes. After Sunday’s elections, the AKP will not be able to rule without coalition partners.
  Putting on a brave face, the AKP prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, said that the party was the clear winner in the election and vowed to take all necessary measures to prevent harm to Turkey’s political stability.
  “Everyone should see that the AKP is the winner and leader of these elections,” Davutoglu said in a speech to supporters from the balcony of the AKP headquarters in Ankara. “No one should try to build a victory from an election they lost.”
  The New York Times notes that Erdoğan was not on the ballot, but for all intents and purposes the election was a referendum on whether to give his office extraordinary powers, and give his AKP a two-thirds majority in parliament, which would prolong his tenure as the country’s most powerful politician and allow him to remake the Ataturk republic.
  “The outcome is an end to Erdogan’s presidential ambitions,” Soner Cagaptay, an expert on Turkey and a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told the Times.
  If the significant losses of the AKP and the rejection of Erdogan’s agenda were the most important take-away from the election, the second important news was the ability of several Kurdish groups to unite under the banner of the HDP and cross the 10 percent threshold, which a party must cross in order to have seats in parliament.
  Erdogan not only campaigned vigorously against Kurdish presence in Parliament – but in the run-up to the elections, more than seventy HDP offices were attacked and sacked – the last two on Friday – in an effort by Erdogan supporters to intimidate and suppress the pro-Kurdish vote.
  “This is the end of identity politics in Turkey,” Gencer Özcan, professor for international relations at Bilgi University in Istanbul, told the Guardian. “The election threshold is not the only barrier that was overcome tonight in the elections, but also emotional and identity barriers have been breached.”
  “This is a golden opportunity for the HDP,” said Özcan. “Voters in Turkey endorse democracy in Turkey across identity boundaries.”
  In a clever move to expand its appeal beyond Turkey’s roughly 20 percent Kurdish population, the HDP ran on a platform defending the rights not only of ethnic minorities like the Kurds, but also of women, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. The party’s expanded platform made it appealing to younger and more educated voters in Istanbul and in the suburbs of Ankara.
  Election returns show that the HDP succeeded in wooing center-left and secular voters disillusioned with Erdoğan. “The reason the HDP has won this many votes is because it has not excluded any members of this country, unlike our current rulers,” 25-year-old Siar Senci told the Guardian. “It has embraced all languages, all ethnicities and members of all faiths and promised them freedom.”
  The traditional opposition party, the secularist Republican People’s party (CHP), will be the second largest group in parliament, with 25 percent of the vote.
  The right-wing, populist Nationalist Movement party (MHP), seen as the AKP’s most likely partner if it tried to form a coalition government – both parties share an antipathy toward the Kurds and the EU, a reluctance to withdraw Turkish forces from north-east Cyprus, and suspicion of free markets and globalization – took 16.5 percent of the vote. The MHP’s deputy chairman, Oktay Vural, said on Sunday it was too early to talk about forming a coalition government with the AKP.
  “It would be wrong for me to make an assessment about a coalition, our party will assess that in the coming period. I think the AKP party will be making its own new evaluations after this outcome,” Vural said.
  Regional implications
  Erdogan aspired for Turkey to have a leading role in the Middle East and in the Islamic world. His ambition led him to try and differentiated Turkey from countries in the region even when Turkey shared these countries’ goals.
  Thus, while Turkey shared with Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Egypt, and Jordan the goal of removing Bashar-al-Assad from power, it allowed thousands of foreign fighters to pass through Turkey to join ISIS. The reason: ISIS was willing to fight not only the Assad forces, but also the Kurds in Syria, Kurds who historically supported to pro-independence sentiments among Turkish Kurds. ISIS was also willing to fight the moderate Syrian rebels supported by Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt, thus weakening the influence of these countries in post-Assad Syria by weakening their proxies there.
  Turkey’s unwillingness to stem the flow of foreign fighters to ISIS also strained its relations with fellow NATO members.
  Since January, after two and half years of friction and acrimony, the main supporters of non-ISIS anti Assad rebels – Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf States – have finally put their differences aside, and are now united behind supporting the moderate, non-ISIS anti-Assad rebels. The rebel groups themselves show a greater degree of cooperation and coordination, which – together with supplies of new weapon systems like anti-tank TOW missiles – have changed the balance on the battlefield against the Syrian regime.
  Turkey has so far refused to allow the U.S.-coalition to use Turkish air bases to fly missions against ISIS. Turkey has conditioned its permission for the use of its bases on the coalition planes attacking not only ISIS fighters, but also Assad forces and Hezbollah formations, and on the coalition creating a no-fly zone some ten miles wide on the Syrian side of the Syria-Turkey border. Turkey, which is home now to more than two million Syrian refugees, says that the creation of such a no-fly strip along the border would allow it to return the refugees to Syria, where they will be safe from the regime’s air attacks, and will also allow rebels to train and organize in order to pose an even stiffer challenge to the Assad regime.
  Turkey has also not endeared itself to fellow Sunni Muslim states in the region by supporting the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Hamas in the Palestinian territories – two movements which are an anathema to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf States.
  Turkey and Qatar are also the only supporters of the Islamist-led government in Tripoli – while the rest of the world, and the Arab League, recognize to legitimacy of the government which won elections in Libya last summer, but which was chased out of Tripoli in August by Islamist rebels who created their own government and parliament, which Turkey and Qatar recognize (the internationally recognized Libyan government now sits in Tobruk).
  Analysts say that the diminished power of Erdogan and the AKP after Sunday’s elections may lead the new government – which will be a coalition government —- to rein in Erdogan’s inflated regional ambitions, blunt his go-it-alone tendencies, and make him more amenable to a more consensual and less confrontational approach to the region’s problem.
  “Turkey’s foreign policy will be less driven by the AKP’s ambitions, which is basically driven by a foreign policy vision to make Turkey a regional player at any cost,” Cagaptay told the Times. “The outcome of the election will take Turkey’s anti-Assad policy down a notch. The government will not be able to drive its agenda singlehandedly anymore.”
  Taking the Turkey’s anti-Assad policy down a notch – which means giving up on Erdogan’s effort always to distinguish Turkey from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the Gulf States, even if they all pursue the same goals — is likely to make this policy more effective, as events in Syria since January have proven.
  On Syria, Libya, and other regional issues, a subdued Erdogan, a tamer AKP, and a restrained Turkish foreign policy may make Turkey less of an obstacle to more harmony and greater coordination among the key Sunni states in the Middle East, which is good news for the twin efforts to contain Iran’s regional hegemonic ambitions and weaken Iran’s allies, on the one hand, and defeat the nihilistic forces of jihadist Islamist extremism, on the other hand.

Extreme weather events connected to climate change

Extreme weather events connected to climate change

Published 4 June 2015

 

The amount of rain or snow falling in the heaviest one percent of storms has risen nearly 20 percent on average in the United States — almost three times the rate of increase in total precipitation between 1958 and 2007. Recent heavy rains in Texas and the deadly heat wave in India are indicators that climate change, brought on by increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, is most likely enhancing the effects of these extreme weather events, according to climatologists.

Recent heavy rains in Texas and the deadly heat wave in India are indicators that climate change, brought on by increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, is most likely enhancing the effects of these extreme weather events, according to climatologist Jim White, director of CU-Boulder’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research.
“There is so much additional greenhouse gases in the atmosphere today that our climate we know is modified by greenhouse gases — by the additional energy that comes from that,” White said. “The heat wave in India is quite consistent with what we expect to see in the future. Heat waves, in general, we expect to increase, not only in areas like India, but we expect them to increase in the United States as well.”
According to a new study by Swiss researchers published in Nature Climate Change, extreme weather events world-wide are increasing with regularity, indicators that these events are becoming part of the Earth’s over-all climate pattern.
White says, however, that it is one thing to know these extreme weather events will happen in the future but predicting when and where they will happen is something we cannot do.
”We can generally say that we expect more precipitation in a warmer world because the atmosphere just holds more moisture,” he said. “That’s not terribly comforting, however, because where it rains is really important. Because if it’s raining out over the ocean that doesn’t do us any good. And so predicting where it rains is not an easy thing to do. What we do think is going to happen is as the atmosphere warms up we’ll get more rain per event. So convective storms — thunderstorms – we expect to get stronger.”
A CU-Boulder release reports that there are other aspects of climate change that White says are up for debate. One is the increase of cutoff lows — a weather event similar to what happened in Colorado in 2013, which caused widespread flooding along the Front Range.
“There are other aspects of climate and weather that we argue about having to do with slower moving storms - more of what we call ‘cutoff lows’ where you have a low pressure system that is cut off from the jet stream,” White said. “It just idles and continues to dump rain or snow in one location. Features like that we argue about but we do expect features like that to increase in the future.”
White says right now there are two things happening that can be directly attributed to climate change — rising sea levels caused by melting glaciers and the shrinking arctic ice sheet.
“The Arctic is warming up,” he said. “Sea ice in the Arctic is going away. Sea level is rising and that is also quite attributable to a warmer world. And it’s very difficult for people to grasp just how dynamic that impact is. So we expect a significant sea level rise over the next several hundred years just from the CO2 we have in the atmosphere today. The amount of sea level rise we expect is something on the order of 10 to 20 meters. So you are talking 30 feet or more.”
According to the 2014 National Climate Assessment report by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, the amount of rain or snow falling in the heaviest one percent of storms has risen nearly 20 percent on average in the United States — almost three times the rate of increase in total precipitation between 1958 and 2007. According to the report, the Northeast alone has seen a 74 percent increase in the amount of rain or snow falling in the heaviest storms.

Nanosensor bandage measures wound oxygenation

Nanosensor bandage measures wound oxygenation

Published 4 June 2015

 

There is nothing new in the understanding that with combat come injuries, sometimes extreme injuries. In treating and healing wounds, however, physicians must overcome one obstacle which always challenges the healing of wounds: lack of oxygen. Thus, it is necessary to make certain that sufficient oxygen is reaching the healing wound. Chemists have developed a nanosensor bandage which measures the level of oxygen in wounds – a bandage which uses a changing color scheme to inform doctors of the level of oxygen supply in the treated wound.

There is nothing new in the understanding that with combat come injuries, sometimes extreme injuries. Military doctors, in particular surgeons, have done remarkable work in healing those wounds, often grafting healthy tissue, using microsurgery to connect blood vessel to the healthy tissue.
There is, however, one obstacle which always challenges the healing of wounds: lack of oxygen. Thus, it is necessary to make certain that sufficient oxygen is reaching the healing wound. Doctors often were unable to determine oxygen levels around the wound, and grafts have failed because of the difficulty in monitoring oxygenation.
Writing in the Scientific American, Mark Peplow reports a significant step forward.
Conor Evans is a chemist as the Harvard Medical School and the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. During a visit to the San Antonio Military Medical Center in Texas, he saw the problems resulting from the inability to monitor oxygen levels.
Evans and his colleagues began using dyes which react to different levels of oxygen, then added nano-sized molecules to regulate the dye’s activity. They then used these to create a liquid bandage which provides an indicator of the level of oxygen in a wound. The color scale used starts with green, indicating that plenty of oxygen is reaching, and gradually runs through yellow, orange, and red, indicating a worsening in the oxygenation level of the wound, announcing this status directly over the affected portion of the wound.
Evans’s technique consists of two dies mixed into a fast-drying liquid bandage which can be painted directly over a wound. A quick burst of blue light then energizes the dyes, one glowing bright green, the other bright red.
The presence of a sufficient supply of oxygen causes the red dye to become inactive, the bandage glowing a bright green. As fewer oxygen molecules are present in a specific area, however, the dyes then turn from yellow to orange, and finally to an attention-getting red.
Nanotechnology is the key to making all this work. Evens’s team then bonded the red dye molecules with a branching, 2-nanometer wide tree-like structure called a dendrimer. The result prevents molecules from interfering adjacent dye molecules, which would reduce their phosphorescence. They also block some oxygen molecules from reaching the dye. By starting with the lower levels producing a bright red, any changes are made more obvious.
Evans speculates that the bandage may also be engineered to dispense medications, a speculation Paula Hammond shares. Hammond, a chemist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, believes that nanotechnology would allow the creation of a bandage that could do so.
Hammond’s lab has found that applying bandages with nanoengineered coatings, it is possible slowly to release RNA or certain molecules to inhibit interfering RNAs, which can restrict the ability of genes that produce problem-causing proteins.
Evans’s bandages will begin human trials this year, while Hammond’s medication-delivery bandages have thus far been successful in animal experiments.
— Read more in Mark Peplow, “Nanotech Bandages Detect Health Trouble and Deliver Medicine,” Scientific American (1 April 2015)

Gambian government expels Hezbollah funder

Gambian government expels Hezbollah funder

Published 4 June 2015

 

Husayn Tajideen, one of three Lebanese brothers sanctioned by the United States for providing financial support to Hezbollah, was accused of “unacceptable business practices that are detrimental to the Gambian economy,” ordered to cease all business operations, and leave the country within thirty days.

Several newspapers report that Husayn Tajideen, one of three Lebanese brothers sanctioned by the United States for providing financial support to Hezbollah, was accused of “unacceptable business practices that are detrimental to the Gambian economy,” ordered to cease all business operations, and leave the country within thirty days.
“Gambia deserves high praise for taking decisive action against the forces of violent extremism and expelling Hezbollah funder Husayn Tajideen,” said Ambassador Mark D. Wallace, CEO of the Counter Extremism Project (CEP). “Husayn Tajideen and his two brothers control a series of businesses in Gambia, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Angola and the British Virgin Islands designed to funnel money to Hezbollah. We hope Gambia’s strong leadership is replicated by other countries, resulting in the severing of the funding pipeline to one of the world’s most dangerous extremist organizations.”
Linked to the government action, money transfer firm Western Union reportedly terminated its contract with Trust Bank Gambia Ltd, accusing it of links to an individual on a U.S. anti-terrorism list. Although Western Union did not name the individual, sources in the government confirmed it was Tajideen.
CEP says that in March, it wrote to Western Union and international mail and package delivery company DHL to clarify and sever any links they had with front companies such as Tajco and Congo Futur, owned and operated by the Tajideen brothers. In response, Western Union closed its branch office in a Gambian shopping center owned by the Tajideen brothers, terminated its contract with the operator of the store and hired an outside law firm to investigate how, in contravention of established company policy, a connection to a Hezbollah front entity could have taken place.
In response to a CEP’s inquiry, DHL acted to end efforts by Congo Futur to falsely claim DHL as a business partner on its website. DHL confirmed to CEP in writing that Congo Futur removed the DHL logo from its website, thereby ending the misuse of DHL’s name and reputation.
Husayn, Ali, and Kassim Tajideen and their network of enterprises have all been sanctioned by the United States for their financial support for Hezbollah. In a 2010 designation, former Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Stuart Levey stated that “Ali and Husayn Tajideen’s multinational network generates millions of dollars in funding and secures strategic geographical strongholds for Hizballah” (U.S. Treasury Department, “Treasury Targets Hezbollah Financial Network,” 9 December 2010).

Combating cyber threats to the global financial industry

Combating cyber threats to the global financial industry

Published 4 June 2015

 

 

Today more than fifteen billion devices are connected to the Internet; in the next five years, that number will grow to fifty billion. With each new device presenting an opportunity to be infiltrated and compromised by hackers, it is easy to understand why the importance of cybersecurity continues to skyrocket. So explained keynote speaker Elizabeth Petrie, director of strategic intelligence analysis for Citigroup, who kicked off a one-day conference at the University of Delaware on cybersecurity issues impacting the global financial industry.

Today more than fifteen billion devices are connected to the Internet; in the next five years, that number will grow to fifty billion. With each new device presenting an opportunity to be infiltrated and compromised by hackers, it is easy to understand why the importance of cybersecurity continues to skyrocket.
So explained keynote speaker Elizabeth Petrie, director of strategic intelligence analysis for Citigroup, who kicked off a one-day conference at the University of Delaware on cybersecurity issues impacting the global financial industry.
The SWIFT Institute partnered with UD’s Cybersecurity Initiative (UDCSI), Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics and College of Engineering to host the conference, which Petrie called a step toward better industry communication about cybersecurity.
Collaborative conferences like these are critical, she said, because attackers “could go after your major competitor today, but they’re simply going to pivot and come after you tomorrow if you have the same vulnerabilities.”
A UD release reports that during her presentation Petrie set the stage for the conference’s discussions, describing the current landscape of cyber threats and the evolution of hackers over time, including nation-state actors, cyber criminals, cyber terrorists and hacktivists like Anonymous.
These groups have shifted from what Petrie calls “hacking for fun” to “hacking for profit,” to now “hacking for destruction.”
As businesses continue to digitize their records, she continued, increasing amounts of data are also at risk.
From recent high-profile hacks of corporations like Sony Pictures and Target to hacks of small businesses’ unencrypted records, Petrie explained that the costs of such attacks in the U.S. total over $113 billion, and could grow to $3 trillion in the next five years.
“What that means for some corporations is that if they are not appropriately postured in cybersecurity, they could potentially go out of business,” she said. “But there is good news: There’s a lot that we can do about this,” she continued, walking the audience through an “anatomy of attack” and corresponding responses.
Tools available for businesses discussed both by Petrie and by other presenters throughout the day include data protection, vulnerability assessment, incident management and more. Petrie discussed businesses that hire hackers to find vulnerabilities in their systems, and others who run simulated hacks to practice their response.
She said that another promising tool lies in the growing field of big data, which allows professionals to utilize data to proactively examine the threat stream. She added that the financial services industry must be a leader because their services “are truly at the heart of all business that is being done,” making them a “highly valued target.”
Petrie also emphasized the importance of securing not just a company’s computers, but the employees working behind the computers as well. Insider threats — both unintentional and malicious – make up a sizable percentage of the threats that companies face.
Conference panelists, including cybersecurity experts from a variety of businesses, governmental and academic institutions including the FBI, Deloitte, IBM, Barclays, AT&T and others, shared their opinions on similar issues.
The panel discussions were conducted under the Chatham House Rule, which is designed to encourage open discussion by allowing those in attendance to share information without commentary being specifically attributed to individuals.
“Cybersecurity is not a technology problem; it’s a people problem,” said one panelist of insider threats. The panelist explained that employees “may become disgruntled, upset, annoyed at their employers, annoyed with life.”
“That may lead them down a road that they never intended when they first joined an organization,” the panelist continued.
Another panelist explained that companies are beginning to utilize big data to identify employees who could present a security risk. The panelist calls these at-risk employees “falling stars.”
“A falling star is someone who is no longer getting tasks or information being pulled from seniors, so their position is being diminished in some way,” the panelist said. Falling stars also are, he noted, “not as active in communication with their peers, and the flow down of information to subordinates cools off, while communication patterns outside of the organization begin to grow.”
This is one way, the panelist said, that companies can implement preexisting in-house data to improve cybersecurity.
Panelists also provided practical advice to conference attendees seeking to stay ahead of the curve in what participant Craig Young, chief technology officer at the SWIFT Institute called, “an arms race between hackers and financial institutions.”
One panelist recommended the use of control frameworks, which allow IT auditors to assess various areas of company performance to determine strengths and weakness. Auditors can then recommend dozens of best practices to improve weak areas.
Another participant said that the most effective programs are those that bring an “organic art” to the problem, involving collaborations between IT professionals and employees with deep understanding of the company’s business, culture and networks.
In a session that focused on cybersecurity tools, the panelists agreed that one of the major obstacles facing the industry is the tools used to monitor and analyze the data don’t “speak a common language” and do not work well together.
Another noted that “security noise is the biggest problem we have,” explaining that a system can produce “hundreds of thousands of alerts per day,” of which only a few are important and worth notice.
All also agreed that cybersecurity tools could be made stronger by standardization of information across systems coupled with simple training and education. It was stated that phishing — an illegal attempt to gain sensitive information online, often for malicious purposes — accounts for 80 percent of cyberattacks and could be reduced dramatically just by making users aware of how to safely navigate the Internet.
Chairing the conference was Starnes Walker, founding director of the UDCSI and former chief technology officer for the U.S. Navy’s U.S. Fleet Cyber Command, director of research at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and technical/executive director at the Office of Naval Research.
“The University of Delaware has the advantage of being located in the corporate capital of America and halfway between the commercial capital of New York City and the military and intelligence capital of Washington, D.C.,” Walker said.
“As such, UD’s Cybersecurity Initiative is uniquely positioned to be a bridge between our nation’s best experts from government, industry and academia.”
“Cybersecurity is not the next big industry; it is the industry,” Petrie said during her keynote speech. “We are all in it today, actively working together to figure out how to mitigate the threats that are coming at us each and every day.”